If you are a small business owner and even considering purchasing commercial property, now is the time. Interest rates are at an all time low, SBA loans will allow you to get in with 10% down and property prices have rolled back 10 years.

The recent Sunday Edition of the St. Pete Times had a nice article on 504 and 7A loans (by Jeff Harrington). Excellent article and I wanted to add an important point. While the big banks have certainly curtailed SBA loans, the small banks seem to have stepped up and are writing more.

Based on my experience, Bank of America is one of the most difficult for the small business person to get any loan from, SBA or otherwise. And the recent recession has made that even worse.

The small local and regional banks, on the other hand, are working hard to pick up the slack.

In addition there are two local, non profit, firms, that facilitate the SBA 504 loans and they are doing a very good job.

Among those that I have talked to who are actively doing SBA 504 loans are:

• Regions Bank
• Suntrust Bank
• Florida Bank (Used to be named Bank of St. Petersburg)
• Bay Cities Bank
• 5/3 Bank
• Whitney Bank
• Grow Financial Credit Union
• The Bank of Tampa

There are two servicing organizations in the area that process the 504 loans. Both are non-profit, and pleasant to work with.

Gulfcoast Business Financing has performed a handful of these this year and can be contacted at:
Beverly Pringle (Pinellas based)
Gulf Coast Business Financing
7278952504
bpringle@gulfcoastbiz.com
www.gulfcoastbiz.com

Florida Business Development is in Tampa and has completed 50 - 60 this year. They can be contacted at:
Bill Habermeyer (Hillsborough based)
Florida Business Development Corp.
bill@fbdc.net
www.fbdc.net
813 348 0660